Civil servants have their orders for Brexit. They should snap out of their smug Europhilia and deliver

Theresa May and George Osborne, frontman of the Treasury's anti-Brexit dossiersCredit:
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Civil servants have good reason to feel superior to politicians. While ministers come and go, borne hither and thither by the winds of party politics, the mandarins remain, building up expert knowledge and doing the dirty work. But the flipside of this is that they can exercise power without having to worry about that pesky matter of democratic accountability; no matter how the British people vote, they will remain in their positions of influence.

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This means that while democracy strikes fear into their political masters, it is, to them, less important. The worst an election can bring for them is a new set of politicians with big ideas that need executing. When George Osborne needed them to produce official analysis to help him terrify voters about Brexit in the run-up to the EU referendum, they were more than happy to provide. When Theresa May took over with her pro-Brexit administration,...